15 February 2013

Building the Bicycle Snake

UPDATE: A year back we blogged about the Bicycle Snake - Cykelslangen - being built to both help connect the popular Vesterbro and Islands Brygge neighbourhoods of Copenhagen, and to create a simpler more direct route around Copenhagen's unfortunately quintessential American-style shopping mall for the 9000 cyclists that transit that area every day. We've been talking about it, waiting for it, and with it's elegant Danish design - really been looking forward to it.

Which is why I was so pleasantly surprised when to discover yesterday that construction has started. A year behind schedule, but hey it's on its way.

As I wiggled down a little ramp on a cargo bike, bumped over cobblestones, and squeezed past delivery trucks (the maze the Bicycle Snake will relieve us from), these are the developments made thus far:

Ok, so it's not much, but in the lower left corner you can see where construction has begun. You can also see a cyclist riding off the sidewalk/current bike lane onto cobblestones where he then dismounts his bicycle and carries it up two flights of stairs. In a few months, he should be sans cobblestones, dismounts, stairs, and riding (10 metres) high. For a brief reminder, taken from approximately the same angle, here's what it will look like:

photo of Cykelslangen from architect Dissing + Weitling

Until then, we've got the City's standard friendly post reminding us that, roughly translated, they're building better connections for pedestrians and cyclists and until it's finished this summer they hope we can bare with them and have a bit of extra consideration and respect for each other in the construction zone.

2 comments:

I hope to see the bridge on my next trip to Copenhagen. But by the way, is it the only infrastructure project in Copenhagen during the last year? On the website of city of Copenhagen there are no projects listed younger than 2011.http://www.kk.dk/da/borger/trafik/cyklernes-by/projekter

Does City of Copenhagen take a break in building the world´s best city of cyclists?

Problem is that the government has enforced a strict limit on how much municipalities can spend on new construction, so even though the city has allocated 10 million euro to new cycling infrastructure this year, they can't spend it since that bloody Nordhavnsvej bypass is eating up the whole budget allowance for the city.

Kilometres cycled by Copenhageners so far today

Copenhagenize.com is the blog of Copenhagenize Design Company. Online since 2007 and highlighting the cycling life in Copenhagen and around the world.

40 years ago Copenhagen was just as car-clogged as anywhere else but now 41% of the population arriving at work or education do so on bicycles, from all over the Metro area. 55% of Copenhageners themselves use bicycles each day. They all use over 1000 km of bicycle lanes in Greater Copenhagen for their journeys. Copenhagenizing is possible anywhere.